Yes, it currently is awesome already

But is 4.0 going to be radically different?

Thanks

but only if a Lego minifig is singing that is it "awesome"

No, it will not be radically different. The reason for the switch to a new major version is not a technical one, it is more or less because Mr Torvalds want to keep the minor version numbers low.

The biggest difference will probably be more obtuse devices supported by drivers. They will also probably decide that programs that have worked well for years are integrally flawed, and throw them out (deprecate them) and start with alpha versions of the new tools that are much more unreliable than the old ones.

Stop the nonsense. The kernel developers are well known to not remove anything that is still in use even by only one person (see the story why EISA support is still present).

It isn't.

There are some performance improvements, a number of bugs fixed but nothing tremendously changed.

I'm running RC-1 now using a configuration from 3.18. No real changes but some improvements.

I'll probably either use it as soon as it appears in the Experimental repository or get bored and grab it straight from kernel.org on one of my machines but I'm not expecting to notice anything cool apart from a number change.

I read on Slashdot that the new kernel will have improved open-source graphics drivers. Woot!

Hope so. I will grant that the Radeon driver is a bit better - but there are still some hangs.

My big test is the SuperTuxKart - with the ZenGarden race track. It is still unplayable, but does better than the 3.18 kernel driver.

Some funny comments in here. http://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-k...ometer-to-4-0/


But, no it won't be much.

No! It won't be awesome.

Nothing like a change from 2.4.x to 2.6.x.

But it would be like as when it changed from 2.6.x to 3.x and now from 3.x to 4.x.

My understanding is that there will not be any breaking changes, in fact this was going to be 3.20 but Linus thinks it's a good time for a version bump.

I think somewhere along the line the Radeon driver got better (between 3.16 and 3.18). Ubuntu uses 3.16 and performance is not as good as Fedora, which uses 3.18. Who knows what kernel 4.0 will improve?

4.0 is pretty decent. With the last updates (which did include some X updates) and the openarena updates, things got a lot better... but there are still problems with supertuxracer though. I haven't seen hard hangs (openarena would hang right off), video is a lot better so far, but when there is some heavy texture mapping going on there does seem to be limits.

But nothing requiring a reboot.

There is that mount issue with 3.18 that I never saw with the 4.0 - but I think that is a problem with systemd shutdowns. I don't see it because the initram I'm using is still from before the 3.18 updates.

How did you get the update? Just run yum or dnf with the Rawhide repos?

EDIT: Latest version in the repos as of now is 3.18.8. Big deal.